Till Death Do Us Tart (Oxford Tearoom Mysteries ~ Book 4)

by H. Y. Hanna

  Mary shook her head slowly. “Not really… I’m an only child and Mummy didn’t like most of our relatives, so we weren’t on friendly terms with them… I… I suppose Professor Ashton from the college might come over… She’s the Principal and I know her quite well. I work in the college offices, you see…” She faltered. “But it’s the weekend and I’m not quite sure…”

  “Look, would you like me to drive you home? I’d be very happy to do that.” I gave her a smile.

  She looked at me gratefully. “Thank you. That’s… that’s really kind of you.”

  I let my mother know what I was doing and left the pavilion a few minutes later with Mary. She showed me to her car and I helped her load Camilla and the accompanying show paraphernalia into the back, then I took the wheel. A man came running up just as we were about to set off.

  “Mary! Mary! I just heard what happened…” He paused, panting, next to the car.

  Mary lowered the passenger window and, as he bent down and looked in, I realised suddenly that I had seen him before. This was the tall, stoop-shouldered man I had almost crashed into earlier when I was carrying the lemonade and returning to the pavilion.

  “Oh Edwin… Mummy had a heart attack!” said Mary tremulously.

  “Yes, I heard, my dear. I’m so sorry,” he said. He made an awkward gesture as if about to reach out to clasp her hand, then he stopped himself. “You should have come to me immediately, Mary. You know I would have taken care of you. I’ll drive you back to Eccleston House now, shall I? I can stay with you as well.”

  “Oh, I…” Mary seemed confused and uncertain. “I… I don’t know… Gemma is taking me home.” She looked helplessly at me, as if hoping I would answer for her. Her eyes were slightly glazed over and I could see that it was all becoming too much for her.

  I hesitated, not sure if I should interfere. From the man’s familiar tone and manner, I took him to be a family friend—probably of Clare Eccleston or Mary’s late father, given his age. Perhaps he saw himself in the role of Mary’s uncle? On the other hand, I didn’t like his peremptory manner…

  I made a decision. “I think Mary needs a bit of time alone now,” I said firmly. “Perhaps you can give her a ring later tonight or tomorrow morning?”

  The man compressed his lips and looked slightly annoyed. “Well, if you’re sure, Mary…”

  “Yes, thank you, Edwin… Gemma’s right… I… I just want to go home now and rest for a bit…”

  We left him standing on the edge of the village green, watching us as we drove away. Mary sat in a daze for most of the drive, only speaking up to give directions, and I didn’t press her for more conversation. I had a feeling that the shock of everything was starting to hit her now and she was struggling to hold herself together. I glanced across at her hands, clenched so tightly in her lap that the knuckles showed white, and noted that her face was pale and strained as she sat staring ahead at the windscreen.

  It would probably have helped if she could have burst into tears and had a good cry but I was sure that Mary would have been brought up with the old-fashioned English ideal of “always keep a stiff upper lip”: to never show your emotions, no matter how upset you are. Oh, it wasn’t the official line anymore; modern Englishmen (and women) were encouraged to cry and rage in public as much as they liked—and frequently did with shameless abandon if reality TV was any guide—but I was sure that for a traditionalist like Dame Eccleston, to indulge in such excesses of emotion would have still been seen as weak and “vulgar” and her daughter would have been raised with such standards in mind.

  We swung at last into the wide curving driveway of a large country manor—an imposing Georgian residence set in its own formal gardens. I looked around with quiet admiration as I got out and helped Mary unload the car, and my admiration increased as we went through the front door and into a large foyer with a black and white chequered marble floor. A sweeping staircase curved down one side of the foyer and an elegant chandelier hung suspended from the high ceiling.

  Three Persian cats came running to meet us and milled around our legs, purring softly.

  “Hello Tabitha, Chloe, Lancelot…” said Mary absently. She opened the cat carrier and let Camilla re-join her friends. Then she led me into an anteroom to the right of the foyer.

  “Mummy likes—” Mary broke off, then swallowed and continued, “I mean, she liked to keep all the cat show things in here.”

  I looked around the large utility room filled with feline supplies and equipment. Rows upon rows of “Best in Show” and “Best of Breed” ribbons and rosettes hung on the walls, together with framed pictures of Persian cats in various colours.

  “Is there a particular place you’d like me to leave the things?”

  “Um…” Mary looked vaguely around the room. “The… the blankets should go over there, unless they are to be washed, of course, and the grooming brushes on that shelf… and the bowls—if they’re clean—go in that cupboard, but if they’re dirty, we leave them on that wooden bench by the door… and then I take them to the kitchen later… oh, this is where they were…” She looked blankly at the end of the bench where a bunch of picnic forks lay. “I was looking for these at the show. I must have forgot to pack them this morning… I was in such a hurry, I knew I would forget something and Mummy said to tell Joseph to help, except that he wasn’t really much help… and oh, the litter trays—I need to give them a wash too… Mummy always said we could just scoop out the soiled litter and top it up with more but I think it’s better if we give things a thorough wash; one never knows with litter trays—I always feel like they’re so dirty, you know, even though I know they’re not really and I do always wash my hands after handling them—”

  “Hey, hey…” I said gently, catching Mary’s arm. Her eyes were slightly wild and she was gesticulating frantically. I spoke slowly and softly, as if calming a frightened horse, “It’s all right, Mary. It’s going to be all right.”

  She stopped and took a deep shuddering breath. “We… we have to put everything back properly… that’s how Mummy liked it,” she insisted anxiously.

  “Okay,” I said soothingly. “We’ll do that. You just tell me where to put things and we’ll do it together, okay?”

  I helped her unpack and return most of the items to their proper places. By the time we’d finished, I thought Mary looked better—the activity seemed to have done her good. Her eyes had lost that wild look and she seemed to have regained her composure.

  “You will have to contact the family solicitor,” I reminded her gently as we left the anteroom and stepped back into the front foyer. “Although tomorrow is Sunday—so perhaps on Monday morning?”

  Mary looked slightly uncertain. “I’ve never gone to see the solicitor without Mummy before.”

  “What about Audrey? Could she go with you?”

  “Yes, yes, you’re right,” Mary looked at me with relief. “Yes, Aunt Audrey said she would help me with anything I needed. She’s coming over later tonight, I think…” She licked her lips. “Um… would you like some tea?”

  “No, thank you. I’m sure you’d like some time to yourself now,” I said, thinking that the last thing the girl would want was to have to sit down and make polite conversation. However, to my surprise, instead of looking relieved, Mary’s face crumpled and her eyes filled with panic.

  “What is it, Mary?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

  “I… I don’t know what to do!” she burst out suddenly.

  “What do you mean?” I said in surprise.

  She made a helpless gesture. “I don’t know what to do with myself now.”

  “What do you normally do when you come back from a show?”

  “Well, I would usually get Mummy’s slippers for her and massage her feet—because they get very sore, you know—and then I’d make tea. Mummy likes—liked—to have tea in the front parlour. And then I might have to see about supper. Riza does most of the cooking but I help her and I can make the simple di
shes. Anyway, usually after we come back from shows, Mummy likes to have cold meats, with bread and cheeses, for supper. And then… and then I run her bath and turn down her bed and make sure she has her hot water bottles prepared…” She looked around a bit forlornly. “But now… but now Mummy’s not here… I don’t know what to do!”

  I glanced around the room and spied the TV set in the corner. Turning back to Mary, I patted her hand gently. “Look, try not to worry about things too much tonight, okay? You’ve had a shock and it’s natural to feel unsettled—but things will be clearer in the morning. I think you should just take it easy—maybe have a little something to eat, watch some TV to take your mind off things—”

  “Mummy always decided what we watched on the television.”

  “O…kay, well, tonight maybe you can decide yourself, hmm?” I saw the look of terror on her face and changed tack. “On second thoughts, forget the TV. Why don’t you just have a hot bath and then an early night?”

  “Y-yes, you’re right. That’s what I’ll do,” said Mary, looking immensely grateful to be given specific instructions. She gave me a shy smile. “Thank you, Gemma.”

  I returned the smile, struck suddenly by how young and childlike Mary seemed. She must have been in her mid-twenties—no more than a few years younger than me—and yet we were worlds apart. Then I thought of Dame Eccleston’s domineering personality. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising after all that Mary had remained so immature and dependent, particularly if she was too quiet and shy to make friends on her own.

  The sound of wheels crunching on the gravel outside alerted me to the fact that my mother had arrived to pick me up. As we walked to the front door together, I looked hesitantly at Mary again. I didn’t really like leaving her alone.

  “Do you have a housekeeper?” I asked.

  “We have a maid, Riza, but she normally has the weekends off. She’s gone to London to see a friend and won’t be back until late. Joseph had to help us load the car this morning.”

  “Joseph?”

  “He’s our gardener. I mean, not ours, really. He’s the St Cecilia’s College gardener but he comes and does extra work here when Mummy asks him to.”

  “Is he still here?”

  Mary looked uncertain. “He might still be around, outside in the gardens somewhere…”

  “I don’t like the thought of leaving you alone,” I said.

  Mary gave me a small smile. She bent down and scooped up one of the Persians in her arms, cuddling it close. “I’m not alone. I have the cats. And I know what I should do this evening now.” She gave me another grateful look. “I’ll… I’ll be okay, Gemma. Thank you.”

  “Well… if you need anything, give me a call.” I gave her my mobile number. Then with a final smile and wave, I left the house and went out to my mother’s car.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “What a dreadful business,” my mother said at breakfast the next morning as she lifted the local newspaper from the pile of mail and stared at the headline on the front page: “Tragic Death at Village Fête!”

  I saw that, underneath that, there was a slightly smaller sub-heading and a piece about the theft of two valuable quad bikes from the fête. I winced for Devlin. From a police PR point of view, the fête had been an absolute disaster. I had only had a terse text from Devlin last night and I knew that he would be wrapped up most of today dealing with the aftermath, but I was pleased that his message confirmed that we were still on for dinner tonight.

  “It was pretty rotten luck,” I said as I sat down next to my mother with two slices of toast and reached for the jar of home-made marmalade she had picked up at the village fête. It was a nice treat to be sitting here in my parents’ sunny kitchen, enjoying a lazy breakfast on a Sunday morning—normally, I’d have been up early and at work already, as weekends were usually our busiest times at the tearoom.

  I spread some of the beautiful thick-cut marmalade onto the toast and took a bite, then said, chewing, “Dame Eccleston was a bit of an obnoxious woman but you can’t help feeling sorry for her. If she had managed to get to her pills in time, she might not have died. Such bad timing.”

  “Don’t speak with your mouth full, Gemma,” my mother admonished. “And what do you mean—bad timing?”

  “Well, she had obviously been trying to take her heart tablets when she collapsed. In fact, I remember noticing that she looked very flushed and queasy as we were waiting for the judge to arrive. I thought at the time that it was just show nerves—but now I wonder if it wasn’t the onset of her heart attack. She must have been feeling ill and started to take some pills—and then that silly woman, Theresa Bell, crashed into her—”

  “She can’t have been taking her pills, darling,” said my mother absently as she turned the pages of the newspaper.

  “What do you mean?”

  My mother looked up. “Her heart pills weren’t touched.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I saw her pillbox—a lovely little guilloche enamel silver affair just like the one Eliza Whitfield has. Only Eliza’s has a nightingale on it; Dame Eccleston’s had a picture of a cat. At least, I think it was a cat… I wasn’t really close enough to see… it could have been a rabbit, I suppose. Or a guinea pig? Although really, why anyone would want to have a likeness of one of those ugly little things… but I suppose there’s no accounting for taste and—”

  “Mother, what has all this got to do with Dame Eccleston’s heart pills not being touched?” I interrupted impatiently.

  She paused and looked at me in surprise. “Oh. Didn’t I say? Well, I overheard Mary telling Dame Eccleston that she was putting the pillbox with their other things in a corner of their table. They had some tissues and cotton wool and show pamphlets and other bits and pieces. The pillbox was tucked under the pet first aid kit, near the bottom of the pile.”

  I looked at her blankly. “So? I still don’t understand, Mother.”

  “Well, after the ambulance people had left and everything had calmed down a bit, I happened to glance over at their table and I noticed that the pillbox was still exactly where it had been.”

  “So what?”

  “Well obviously, darling, if she had removed some pills from the box, it wouldn’t be in the same place, would it? She would have replaced it at the top of the pile.”

  “Oh Mother, perhaps you remembered wrong. Your memory is a bit unreliable sometimes.”

  “Nonsense, my memory is excellent.”

  Not when it comes to computer passwords, I thought sourly. I had only been asked about her Apple ID password eight times this week. “Are you sure? I mean, it was pretty chaotic yesterday and you could have easily got things mixed up. They definitely found Dame Eccleston holding a pill in her hand—”

  “No.” My mother was firm. “I did not get anything mixed up. That pillbox had not been touched—which means that whatever Dame Eccleston was holding, she didn’t get it from her own pillbox.”

  An uneasy thought flashed through my mind. If she hadn’t got that pill from her own pillbox, where had Dame Eccleston got the pill that she had been clutching when she died? I pushed it hurriedly away.

  “You must be wrong, Mother.”

  My mother drew herself up to her full height. “I am never wrong.”

  Ooooh! I was itching to argue that but restrained myself. “Well… maybe Dame Eccleston had a second pillbox—or some pills in her pocket,” I suggested.

  “I think that is very unlikely. The whole affair is very odd. Very odd indeed.” She gave me a meaningful look.

  I stared at her. “What are you saying, Mother?”

  “Well, darling, I think there is something suspicious about Dame Eccleston’s death,” my mother said excitedly. “And what’s more, Mabel Cooke and her friends agree with me. We were having a talk at the fête yesterday just before I left. They think it might have been…” She leaned towards me and lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper. “Murder.”

  I groaned. “Mother, you c
an’t listen to them! They think everything is murder!”

  “Darling, they might be right in this instance. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are any number of people who wanted to murder that unpleasant woman. How dared she call Muesli ‘riff-raff’!” My mother gave an indignant sniff.

  I glanced across at Muesli who was sitting on the kitchen windowsill, watching sparrows in our backyard. The little tabby’s tail was twitching back and forth and she was “chattering” excitedly, her whiskers quivering. She couldn’t care less what she had been called.

  I turned back to my mother. “Mother, you know how people get in these shows. It’s all stupid snobbery anyway.”

  “Perhaps. But that wasn’t all. Look at the way she treated her own daughter! Really, the woman had the most cavalier attitude. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she had many enemies—and one of them decided that they had had enough!”

  “Dr Foster was there. He was her GP and he confirmed that she had died of a heart attack.”

  My mother gave a dismissive wave. “Oh, Dr Foster is an old fuddy-duddy! Everyone knows he should have retired long ago! Mabel says that he diagnosed her with meningitis when all she had was arthritis in the neck. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had got it completely wrong… Ah!”

  Her face brightened as she found an advertising supplement tucked into the pages of the local paper. “Oh, how marvellous. That new garden centre is having a sale. I must go and stock up on some new begonias,” my mother added, for all the world as if she hadn’t just been discussing a possible murder. She picked up the supplement and flipped through it quickly. “Hmm… they’ve got a very good deal on some late blooming primroses as well. Perhaps I’ll pop in later today… ugh, really, things just aren’t what they used to be. Look at the dreadful quality of this paper—and the ink too! Stains your fingers horribly and gets paper dust everywhere. I have half a mind to write to the company to complain. The way they cut corners these days is absolutely shameful…”

  I tuned out as she droned on about the deteriorating quality of newspapers in general and how crosswords were impossible to find nowadays, buried amongst the adverts and cartoons… I thought longingly of a time when I would be able to sit and eat my breakfast in the peace and quiet of my own apartment. Well, that day might not be far off, I thought cheerfully. With the tearoom doing so well lately, I had finally decided that I could afford my own flat. In fact, I was going to check out a few apartments with Cassie later this afternoon.